The spatial aspect of gravestones is constant. In a sense, much of archaeological method is concerned with the nature and causes of variation along these dimensions, as shown by excavated remains of past cultures. Its date of manufacture and use is fixed in time, and it has certain physical attributes of form. All archaeological data - artifacts, structures, sites - can be said to possess three inherent dimensions.Ī clay pot, for example, has a location in space. For this reason, any set of archaeological data in which such controls are available is potentially of great importance to the development and testing on explanatory models, which can then be used in uncontrolled contexts.įor a number of reasons, colonial New England grave markers may be unique in providing the archaeologist with a laboratory situation in which to measure cultural change in time and space and relate such measurements to the main body of archaeological method. Much of modern archaeological method and theory has been developed in contexts that lack the necessary controls for precise checking of accuracy and predictive value. Since archaeology deals largely with the unrecorded past, the problem of rigorous control is a difficult one. One of the hallmarks of scientific method is the use of controls in experimentation that enable the investigator to calibrate his results. Whether archaeology can be considered a science in the strict sense of the word is much debated. It is appropriate here to interrupt and pose the question: why would an archaeologist study gravestones from a historic period? Prepared from controlled data taken from the Stoneham cemetery, north of Boston, where the style sequence is typical of the area around this eighteenth-century urban center of eastern Massachusetts, the graph below shows such a curve. This shape, frequently called a "battleship-shaped" curve, is thought by archaeologists to typify the popularity career of any cultural trait across time. If you were to prepare a graph showing how the designs change in popularity through time, the finished product might look something like three battleships viewed from above, the lower one with the bow showing, the center one in full view, and the third visible only in the stern. In and around Boston, however, only the three primary designs would be present. If you were to search cemeteries in the same area, you would find that these other designs have a much more local distribution. If the cemetery you are visiting is in a rural area, the chances are quite good that you will also find other designs, which may even completely replace one or more of the three primary designs at certain periods. By the late 1700's or early 1800's, again depending on where you are observing, the cherubs are replaced by stones decorated with a willow tree overhanging a pedestaled urn. This design also goes through a gradual simplification of form with time. Sometime during the eighteenth century - the time varies according to location - the grim death's head designs are replaced, more or less quickly, by winged cherubs. Earlier versions are quite ornate, but as time passes, they become less elaborate. The earliest of the three is a winged death's head, with blank eyes and a grinning visage. These motifs have distinctive periods of popularity, each replacing the other in a sequence that is repeated time and time again in all cemeteries between Worcester and the Atlantic, and from New Hampshire to Cape Cod. Inspect the stones and the designs carved at their tops, and you will discover that three motifs are present. It also testsĮnter almost any cemetery in eastern Massachusetts that was in use during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Insights into the spread of culture through colonial New England. 29-37.Īn unusual kind of archeological detective work yields new Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow The Plymouth Colony Archive Projectĭeath's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow By James Deetz and Edwin S.
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